Like pretty much the rest of the world, I was playing Skyrim all weekend (being sick helped in that regard actually). Anytime you play a game 20+ hours in the first few days, that says a lot about the game, so clearly I don’t hate it. Well actually I do, in a love/hate way.

Skyrim has the worst UI in the history of videogames.

I don’t care that I’ve not played every single game ever made, I’m confident Skyrim beats them in terms of sucking.

There are UI design decisions in Skyrim that should be used as the absolute most extreme example of “DON’T DO THIS” for design courses.

You know those “work sensitivity” videos you watch in Corporate America? The one where the white guy calls the black guy a bad word, and the video goes on to point out that you should not do that? Or the one where the white guy (always picking on the white man…) hits on the white woman by teller her she has a great rack? And you watch those and go “clearly this is exaggerated for effect, this never actually happens”? Yea well the Skyrim UI is like that, except it’s not a joke or an example or an exaggeration; it’s the final UI for a game that has been in development for years from a very respectable studio that spent millions on the game.

Examples.

The fastest way to switch weapons/spells in the game is to hit Q, which pauses the game and opens up a quick-select menu. For items/spells to appear in that menu, you have to go into the normal inventory and click F on the item/spell. Every time. And nothing says “I’m having a great time in combat” like pausing it every time you want to switch a spell or drink a potion. It’s very immersion-breaking (and I don’t say that jokingly, as Skyrim has great atmosphere you don’t want to be pulled out of), along with just being slow/bad/dumb. Fading hitbar that you can cycle with the mousewheel please.

When you are talking to people, the game world does not pause (awesome), but have fun clicking the response you really want every time with the mouse. For some idiotic reason, the game demands you click the exact center of an option, otherwise it takes the click as a ‘cancel’ click (so if you are shopping, and don’t click the dead-center of an item you want to sell, the game will take you out of selling mode and back into talk mode, same goes for taking/giving items to your companion). Best part? It’s not like that 100% of the time, so you get used to it being normal, and then once every 10 clicks or so it will go into hyper-sensitive mode. Nothing says “I’m having fun now” like clicking the option you want in an important storyline decision, and the game misunderstanding the click and selecting something else. You wanted to save that guy? Oops you ‘clicked’ execute. Yay!

The skill trees. Oh god the skill trees. There are about 20 different trees (smithing, lockpicking, archery, light armor, etc), each represented as a constellation, with each star being a perk or bonus. Cool idea. But you can’t actually see what each star is until you go to it, and hahahaha good luck getting to the one you want. First you have to go into each constellation itself, and once there, the game zooms you in so you can only see one star at a time. Want to see the star above you? Hit up. HAHAHAHA the game took you to three stars above the one you wanted. Hit down. AHAHAHA now you are two stars to the left. I kid you not. Forget planning a character in-game using this thing, that would make setting up Planetary Interaction across six planets in EVE look like figuring out a WoW spell rotation compared to the amount of time it would take you to look at everything in Skyrim. This thing will make you hate just selecting a single star when you level up. Ding -> kick to the nuts -> attempt to select a star. Wheeee.

The journal. Want to see what sidequests you have? Oh we lumped them all into a “Miscellaneous” category, which will close if you move the mouse incorrectly. Have fun tracking those 50+ ‘miscellaneous’ quests you have.

The map. You can’t zoom it out far enough to see the whole world, and you have to go into the journal and THEN go to the map to have it zoom to where your quest objective is. Misclick an icon? Here is a ‘helpful’ personal market. Click again to remove it. Wheee.

I could go on. I really could. It’s just so so bad.

And yet I still think Skyrim is one of the best games I’ve ever played (based on 20hrs). It just is. It’s a better Oblivion. Better graphics (on Ultra), better sound, better setting, MUCH better character faces, better combat, better character advancement (minus the UI aspect of course), better crafting, better itemization. Just better. And Oblivion was pretty amazing for its time, so that’s saying a lot.

The amount of detail in the game is staggering. Little stuff like what your companion says while you are out adventuring. Big stuff like the fact that you HAVE a companion you can equip, and how awesome that makes the combat. Going solo and trying to be an archer is pretty fail. Having a companion in heavy armor charge while you snipe is pretty awesome. Being in heavy armor with a mage companion is also full of win. Double rogue setup? It works, and surprisingly well too.

The pacing feels better than Oblivion as well. Quests take time, but I’ve yet to run into a quest the feels like pure filler. There have been moments during quests that truly surprised me, or had me chuckle. Overhearing certain conversations while you sneak around is VERY rewarding, and just damn entertaining. You immediately get the sense that there is a lot of ‘stuff’ happening in Skyrim, big and small, and you get to interact with all of it in various ways. This might very well be the best ‘world’ outside of an MMO I’ve ever experienced.

And I could go on. I really could. It’s just so so good.

Whoever designed the UI for Skyrim should be fired, tossed out of the office through a window, and run over when they hit the ground. Then whoever approved this UI should be sent next. And the guy responsible for him as well. How you produce such an amazing RPG, and then attempt to ruin it with such a UI is honestly beyond me. The scale of evil now goes: child rapists, Hitler, Skyrim UI designer, murders, everyone else.

I can only hope that the UI can be heavily modded, and all of the suck can be edited out. Until then, I’ll be gaming like a fiend and cursing the UI designer at the same time.

Yes, and when that happened they normally put a lot of effort into changing the UI to a console styled one. Look at the command and conquer games, they put a LOT of effort into turning that on a console.

The fact of the matter is, they didnt even TRY to give us a better UI for pc. And why? the game has first person aspects that are MUCH better with the precision of a mouse. Its just lazy development.

It’s not that it’s a bad pc port of a console UI (though that’s true), it’s a terrible UI even on a console. Yeah, the everyday stuff is easier to navigate (well, the same as using the WASD keys rather than the mouse), but it’s still an atrocious UI. The perks tree is exactly the same and still terrible, for example.

yeah a game thats previous 4 games was on the pc and its REAL loyal fanbase not just the noobs who want a special epic game the people who played the old morrowind and can appreciate for its amazing genius and see past the olden time graphics.

but yeah its for consoles, tbh it actually is based on xbox design which is pretty fucking sad and ungrateful to its actual fucking fanbase.

but yeah good luck with the mods, and console and pausing the game to play on the xbox.

i got 40 keybinds i never have to pause the game during combat, my character doesnt look like shes doing the toilet during casting (confident sorcerer mod) your xbox sucks ánd if got an Xbox its good but its for games like Halo not the elder scrolls

U obviously know nothing. The Elder Scrolls is a PC franchise and for Bethesda to ship out an instalment with such lazy design choices is baffling. The first person perspective has always been a choice made to accomodate the mouse+keyboard setup due to the better accuracy. Playing on the controller is highly inaccurate and feels unimmersive.

Have fun playing on your choppy, 30-fps-capped console u fool.

“I remember not too long ago when games were ported TO consoles FROM the PC, instead of the other way around. C’est la vie.”
Now tats not trolling at all is it? How about u get out there, out of ur house and see the world instead of wasting ur life typing childish, rudimentary comments u cunt.

PC’s>consoles. Without PC’s, ur consoles wont even exist and games wont exist. I’d like to see u attach a printer to a console (but than what would u like to print anyway?) or design a program/game on a console. If u can, I’ll give u my head. You’re a douchebag u know tat? C’est la vie to tat motherfcker.

i’m not even entirely sure what you’re sperging about in your horrible broken txtspk, since Andenthal’s argument certainly seems to indicate that he thinks a PC-centric UI would be better for this game.

i think i’m just gonna have to go with this: you’re an awful little assweed and you should have your hands sewn together so no one ever has to read your shitposting again.

+1 to the guy above. some people just have a bad day, others try to share with everyone.
but if you read that and then sit back and reply with something worth reading, youre okay in my book. onya Sand.

I’ve taken to having regular sessions to make ‘active’ every quest as they seem to drop to inactive for no reason. Even quests recently accepted.
The skill tree constellations seem to make no sense with skills requiring 20 or 40 points but no indication of how many you have. Skills also show as white and available to level but impossible to click on.
In total agreement on the failings of the UI, but like you, despite this I feel that this game could be one of the best I’ve ever played.

The UI for Oblivion was pretty bad as well. I played it on the Xbox, and later, got a cheap copy on my PC, and it was clear that the UI was not only designed with a console in mind, but that the game mechanics were designed with console limitations in mind.

Consoles became a hell of a lot like computers in this last generation. Well, like an apple product with huge limitations on what you can do and limited options in the name of user friendliness (read as: we assume the users are idiots so let’s not give them too many opportunities to screw up). I expect in some future generation the two will merge, so maybe someday we will get back games designed with the PC in mind.

While I agree the UI is horrible, finding that you can setup quick access keys on the 1-8 numbers helped a lot (for spells at least, weapons lose them randomly). You have to open the Favorites Menu (the Q one, not the one from the main UI) and then while hovering over the spell or item press the number to assign it. For navigating the menus, I’ve found it’s best to leave the mouse safely parked in a corner of the screen and using the WASD keys to move around.

For easier switching between a bow and, say, a sword and shield, I found that pressing the hotkey for the bow a second time will revert back to the sword and shield. So equip sword and shield, press the bow hotkey, and when you’re done with the bow press its hotkey again, not the hotkey for sword and shield.

It is a horrible, horrible UI, even by game UI standards, but with enough experimentation it can be made to not get in the way. Most of the time. Sort of.

It’s one of those curious UI quirks: if you have your doublefist spells setup already and you switch to a two-handed item by pressing its hotkey, you can press that hotkey again to return you to your previous doublefist state.

Also worth noting: if you hotkey a shield and various spells, the spells will replace your shield first, and then if you press them a second time, as rulez says, the spell will then replace your main hand weapon. So I have bow, shield, main hand, and spells all hotkeyed, and with a bit of practise, can now switch between sets quite smoothly, flipping out a shield for a quick spell and then back to the shield, for example.

You know whats fucking annoying? I’m playing a sword and shield melee guy. A certain monster likes to shout an attack that disarms me sending my sword to the ground. I have to go find it, pick it up, then re-favorite it, then requip it, then i can get back to the fight. Then he does it again 20 seconds later. FML.

I don’t think the makers of the game consider what Paragus described as a bug. If an item of any kind is dropped, it clears from hotkeys and favorites. Disarming actually disarms and counts as dropping.

It’s definitely a pain in the ass with the way the UI works, but it’s not a bug.

As to the UI being easier to navigate with a controller, I call bullshit. You can navigate the UI with the WASD keys as well, and it works reasonably well…. but screw navigation. Even if navigation was great, the UI is freaking terrible. Even on consoles, the UI is a thing of evil. Maybe not quite as bad, but I suspect instead that console players are just used to abominably bad UI’s due to the controllers limitations in the first place.

But, yeah, it’s really, really bad.

Skyrim is quickly taking the mantle of my favorite game of all time, and also my most loathed UI of all time… and I played games in the 80’s and 90’s damnit!

Seriously, I check daily for UI mods. Sometimes twice a day.

Aside from that, think Skyrim looks good now? If you get youself hooked up with the ini edits:

As others have stated, the Oblivion UI was horrible at launch. But after a few weeks/months the mods started rolling in and it was greatly improved upon. I’m sure the same will be true in Skyrim. It’s disappointing they would release such an awesome game with such a terrible UI, but i suspect they did so knowing the community will fix it for them.

You think that’s bad? Try it left-handed! It won’t let me bind ANY keys to the numpad, saying those keys are “already assigned.” To what? They’re not in the controls menu and they don’t do anything when I press them!

I figured I’d scrape by binding my movement to the arrow keys and squeezing jump, sneak, sprint, shout, interact, favorites and drop in best I can, which isn’t too great. Unfortunately, I discovered that some of these functions are DISABLED on some screens if you change from their default key. Why!?

Really man, being another left-handed gamer, I can feel your pain. Even games like LoL, that during the first stages on the beta used the system handles for click and right-click (that just translates into right-click and left-click according to our setup), they changed to have the buttons fixed (even posted as bug introduced, feature request, blablabla, but was not listened to). At least Skyrim uses the system handler, but in a lot of games I feel it is a pain just to try to simply play. I mean, 10% or so of the world population are left-handed, and no one on the QA of pretty much any big gaming company seem to look at this very simple issue that makes like for us so much easier….

Man I feel the same! You can kinda bind items to hotkeys ,except its buggy! (e.g. whatever I bind to 1 loses its bind periodically , drives me nuts because switching between bow ,dual wield and occasional spell has to go trough that annoying menu)

Oblvion UI was bad but there were mods which made it tolerable. For Skyrim no such things exist yet :/

I mean…this is the way that these games have always worked. All of TES and games like it (Arx Fatalis, FO3, etc.) involve you freezing the game world action to interact with the complex gear and ability options each game puts at your disposal. You can’t really make a “real-time all-the-time” thing work when you have, literally, fifty weapon options on your character at once…or the Arx Fatalis-style “draw runes on the screen with the mouse to cast spells” thing also wouldn’t work in pure real-time.

It’s interesting that you find it so aggravating; have you never played these kinds of games before?

I prefer keyboard/mouse. I’m a dead-eye with a mouse and a lethargic drunk with those damnable thumb sticks. To each his own though, I suppose. <3

As for the annoying bugs (how easy it is to misclick an option after drilling down through several layers or just examining a book), that's the kind of stuff that will be a thing of the past six months from now. One of the accepted hurdles when jumping in this early. ;)

I’ve been watching the various UI mod threads on the Bethsoft forums (and watching for the results on Skyrim Nexus) but I’m afraid that things may take a while. Instead of the XML-based menus that Oblivion, FO3, and FNV had, Skyrim’s menus – if not the entire UI, I can’t recall exactly – is Flash-based. Which means that if anyone wants to mod it, that’s a whole new (potentially incredibly expensive) piece of software and editing learning curve to get through. Because there’s no way in hell Bethsoft is leaving the Flash editor in a free-to-download toolkit.

I’ve also switched to using a 360 controller. It sucks because the dead zone on the analogs making aiming an arrow or picking up a specific item a pita. They REALLY could have optimized things for the PC better than they did.

Playing with a controller, overall, is a much better experience – but not because using the controller is so great but because using a mouse/keyboard is so bad.

Honestly I think the people whining over the UI are being total wieners. I’ve been playing ES since Morrowind and guess what? The UI has always been the same for console and PC. Even if a UI is designed to be easy for a controller, it will always be easier with a mouse and keyboard. You make it seem like everyone has a problem clicking items, dialogue and stars when that’s really not the case. If you’re having so much difficulty clicking, you ought to make sure you don’t have spastic cerebral palsy

Um, for chat menus…you realize you can just use arrow keys and enter to scroll through right? And whichever response is aligned with the arrow bside what the person said to you is selected, click anywhere on the screen to enter it.

You use eith a)mouse wheel b)arrow keys c)w and s to select response. Then a)enter or b)click to enter that response.

I am an old time rpg gamer and have played morrowind and oblivion extensively. Have been waiting for another open world fantasy. Played Skyrim for the first time last night and HATED the interface. It has been made for console players not PC. The massive “container empty” before you open it, sneak eye and other instructions pasted in the middle of the screen totally ruin gameplay. Its like playing a 3rd person shooter not an RPG. So far it is a waste of money. If a good UI mod doesn’t come out will retire to oblivion.

Sounds like you didn’t play oblivion extensively or recently… FTR, all your points about ruining gameplay are on oblivion too… And it saves a lot of time previously wasted opening trauma root containers, to find they’re still empty.
Old timer RPGers started earlier than that man. I played both those games too, and I am not an old time RPGer. For starters, try reminiscing about games actually past their first decade… Since you last played them. :P
And I don’t want to hear any complaints about you only being two years older than that!

Im glad I got a PC copy not a console and don’t throw me the couch and tv shit because I can hook up a xbox 360 controller and my hdtv on my computer but controller sucks and keyboard and mouse is still the king of FPS.

I played Morrowind and Oblivion for hours (Morrowind specially), but the truth is we all got addicted to those old school statistics and inventory tables. I hated Skyrim UI in the beginning since I was expecting that old school feel again. But the truth is I ended up loving it, because it is much more fluid.

I don´t know if it has something to do with the fact that I work with graphic software who’s workflow beneficts alot from using keyboard shortcuts but I ended up loving the fact that once you “mechanize” the keyboard keys sequences you can get to the items you need much faster, without even needing to read or click through the options – i.e. the quick access, “Q” key based function, is great and I use it a lot.

The time that takes for the mouse to travel from option to option in previous games cannot beat the keyboard usage. FPS and RTS game players follow this logic from a long time ago, having quick shortcuts and key based sequences to perform repetitive functions that would take much more time otherwise.

To each it’s own I guess, but I think we, as users, can be very stubborn when faced with different paths then those we got used to, independently of those being better or worse.

The only things that really keep bugging me are the glitches. I thought it sucked largely because of them. Then I went and got SkyUI. Wow. That lasted about 10 minutes. Now I’m back on the default UI, wishing it didn’t forget that I had favorited my war axes, every time I equip them.

I play Skyrim on PC and i use both keyboard+mouse and gamepad (360) – depends if i have the pad or my bro.

I have absolutly no problem using games native UI.
It is one of the best UI for action-rpgs i was able to use.
One problem is skill tree navigation.
Items, menu, spells, favorites, conversations – i have no problem with them.

And i disagree that playing on Pad is worse or inacurate.
Ok.. sniping with mouse is easier, but it’s not imposible on pad.

Fading bars are greate. There was a lot of mods for Oblivion for “feading bars” also… it adds a lot of imersion.

You don’t need to stop the game – You can use hotkeys.
I use favorites for anything that dosen’t deserve a hotkey but i want to have a fast way to use it.

The title of this post is awful. How can you compare a computer designer to such horrible people? That immediately put me off so I hope your goal was to make people not want to read what you’ve written.

Elder scrolls UI developers could learn a lot from diablo, the UI on diablo is and always has been flawless for both pc and console.

First thing that irritates me is that i can’t separate some gear from all the junk i collect in order to don’t sell my gear accidentally, basically what i’m saying is that a new category of items could be created, like the ‘flagged’ that would be unsellable undroppable items until they would be unflagged.

Another thing that irritates me is that quest items are separated by type on the inventory for no reason, they could just create a new category like the ‘quest’ that obviously would be unsellable and undroppable items until the related quest ended.

Quest items should have 0 weight, always, i got to a point where i had 50 weight just of quest items, i had heavy armor and maces at that time so i could barely carry something to sell.

The constelation stuff is tricky to navigate at first but you get used to it, if you want to go to a sertain star but it takes in a different direction just push on the direction of the star you want to go while the thing is still moving or go to a nearby star and click the one you want with the mouse, but still, it should be better i admit.

One should have the option to hide, fail or dismiss certain quests from the quest list.

But even the game has it’s flaws, not just the UI

Difficulty levels should be more extreme, i’m at master and i one-shot almost everything, mind you that i have glass armor and glass maces i don’t even have the daedric stuff (and i don’t plan to upgrade either)

Dragons shouldn’t be so stupid and weak, sometimes dragons fly overhear, you run beneath him shouting and shooting and the stupid dragon continues to attack random people that aren’t doing shit to him and also a mammoth or a giant sometimes kill a dragon pretty easily, that’s just disappointing, they should be strong as hell.

The list goes on and on but at least for me this was the most important, changing weapons and drinking potions stopping the game is frustrating but i don’t need potions for a long looong time and i don’t switch weapons a lot so that doesnt bother me too much, but mages are screwed xD

My main gripe is wasting a primary button (the b-button on the console version) to essentially function as a traditional “select” button, because the actual select button is wasted on a simple wait function of limited value that could happily have been rolled into the b-button mini-menu, freeing up the b- button for something goddamned useful, like, just maybe, the ability to block without having to keep one hand empty?